By Bruno Waterfield, Brussels 4:16PM BST 28 Mar 2011
The European Commission on Monday unveiled a “single European transport area” aimed at enforcing “a profound shift in transport patterns for passengers” by 2050.
The plan also envisages an end to cheap holiday flights from Britain to southern Europe with a target that over 50 per cent of all journeys above 186 miles should be by rail.
Top of the EU’s list to cut climate change emissions is a target of “zero” for the number of petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU’s future cities.
Siim Kallas, the EU transport commission, insisted that Brussels directives and new taxation of fuel would be used to force people out of their cars and onto “alternative” means of transport.
“That means no more conventionally fuelled cars in our city centres,” he said. “Action will follow, legislation, real action to change behaviour.”
The Association of British Drivers rejected the proposal to ban cars as economically disastrous and as a “crazy” restriction on mobility.
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Gee, ya think? And the greens/labor wonder why they just got booted out of power in Australia and why the American public no longer gives a rodents posterior about global warming.
I think it will the EU that’s banned by 2050, not the automobile. Why? The automobile actually provides a useful function for people.
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Here’s the plan:
A new European transport plan 
aims to increase mobility and further integrate the EU’s transport networks – while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the bloc’s dependence on imported oil.
Measures to encourage major infrastructure investments, change the way freight moves and people travel would boost economic competitiveness and create jobs.
The plan – with goals to be met by 2050 – focuses on travel within cities and between cities, and on long distance journeys. It includes calls for:
- cities to completely phase out petrol cars
- shifting to rail or water 50% of all passenger and freight road transport currently making intercity journeys of more than 300km
- airlines to increase their use of sustainable low-carbon fuels to 40%
- shipping to cut 40% off its carbon emissions.
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UPDATE: Per my comment above:
I think it will the EU that’s banned by 2050, not the automobile. Why? The automobile actually provides a useful function for people.
It seems to mirror the thinking of many:
A MASSIVE wave of public support was last night surging behind the Daily Express’s crusade to liberate Britain from the stranglehold of Brussels.
An exclusive poll conducted on the first day of our crusade showed an astonishing 99 per cent of people agree we should quit the European Union.
In an indication of the strength of public feeling on the issue, the poll saw the biggest ever response to a Daily Express phone survey, with tens of thousands of people swamping our switchboards.
Read more and sign the petition: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/213821/21382199-of-you-say-Get-us-out-of-Europe#ixzz1HztMDhJN
h/t to Fred Berple for the update
@Don K re The Oil Drum
I spent years following TOD – and yes they are utterly obsessed with peak oil. I learnt a lot from that site, but I would be cautious about believing most of it anymore. The commenters and editors are mainly uber-greens, disciples of James Hansen and Jim Kunstler, and firm believers in the notion of Powerdown. If you ever look at dieoff.org, there’s all this stuff about peak oil / rolling blackouts and basically the end of civilisation. It’s all thoroughly depressing stuff. It was only with the advent of climategate and my happening across WUWT, that I managed to shake myself free of all that nonsense! Look at the gigantic volume of the earth’s crust – compared with the meagre amount of resources we extract from it – 1 cubic mile of oil per year. Note that on TOD, they hate the abiotic theory of oil production – they will not countenance it or speak of it. And yet it seems to me to be far more plausible than the dead dinosaur theory of oil formation. Yes the oil price is very volatile, but that appears to be mainly a function of political instability and general weakness of the world economies.
I don’t agree with this line of argument, which is why I posted a link to a comment on the same story that I had made elsewhere. I further quoted a paragraph:
“The idea that it requires a noisy, pollution-creating, ton-and-a-half mobile living room with leather arm-chairs and a 200-horse-power motor to haul some commuter’s arse across town at an average speed of about eight miles an hour is simply insane.”
This, Anthony Watts, you call troll traffic. Why? Are you employed by the oil industry or the automobile industry, or is it that you simply cannot brook disagreement? Your intolerance is revealing.
Mikael Ros says:
March 28, 2011 at 11:13 pm
Right! That is most likely what it is. Such a crazy scheme could only be implemented by a totalitarian regime, not in a democratically elected one.
The EU will be lucky to survive the next five years – let alone the next 40.
Consumed by imploding Credit bombs ticking away in Ireland, Portugal, Spain, etc…
And with reference to your postscript: “I think it will the EU that’s banned by 2050, not the automobile.” Why do you consider the EU and automobiles in cities to be mutually exclusive?
You say “The automobile actually provides a useful function for people,” but in what way does that eliminate the possibility that that function could be fulfilled with greater energy efficiency and overall utility without automobiles, at least of the kind we have today, in cities?
It seems that you wish to damn the proposal to eventually eliminate cars from cities on the grounds that it’s a top-down bureaucratic solution. But the fact that we have cities full of cars is entirely the result of an accumulation of public policy decisions made over the last 100 years. Why, then, is it intolerable to you to consider public policies that would have a different tendency?
Energy efficiency, efficiency in the use of road space, improvement in urban air quality and traffic safety are all desirable ends. But to advance those objectives will take coordinated public policy — its the same with sewage disposal and street lighting. The free market, however splendid in some circumstances, won’t do it.
Over the last 20 years, I’ve spent out 3 years working in Europe, mainly in Germany and Netherlands and mainly for 3 to 15 months at a time. I never bought a car, nor missted having one and did all of my traveling by train, bus and bicycle. The average people in these countries do their grocery shopping by bicycle. I never missed having a car and you would be surprised to see the average 70 year old is quite happy to travel by bicycle. In The Netherlands, typical people ride a bike to the train station, take the train to work and then ride a bike the last mile or two to the work place. The option is to fight traffic jams on the highways. It will be much easier to get cars out of Europeans cities than American ones.
When Rush sang Red Barchetta I thought it was over-the-top paranoia.
I guess not.
Let’s look at the matter from the EU Commission’s point of view:
>>
By 2050, most of the commenters o WUWT will be dead, senile or otherwise irrelevant. By then, the people-sheeple will have been exposed all their lives to propaganda in schools, on television and at home, because by then their parents and their grandparents will have been thoroughly indoctrinated by the same media.
Bear in mind that it is customary in Europe for parents to dump their children into the care bureaucrats (“teachers”) from anywhere between age two and age six until they’re between eighteen to twenty-four years old. In the evenings and on holidays, they dump them in front of television sets, where the youngsters can absorb the politically correct views of the day while deluding themselves with the thought that they are enjoying “free time”. And then, when the children have left home, the parents vote to tax them to death to make them pay for their pensions and ever-rising healthcare costs (“intergenerational solidarity”).
Here are some numbers from OESO about the time parents spend with their children (minutes per day):
(Working fathers)(Non-working fathers)(Working mothers)(Non-working mothers)
EUROPE
Belgium 28 31 58 99
France 26 48 62 114
Germany 37 48 66 182
Italy 40 49 85 124
Spain 43 60 85 135
U.K. 43 63 81 155
NON-EUROPEAN WEST
Australia 69 105 137 236
U.S. 60 95 94 155
Get it? Europeans are already the most systematically indoctrinated, brainwashed “children of the state” that ever existed. They’ll believe literally anything they’re taught in school, especially if it is confirmed daily in the media — or so we (their “educators”) hope.
<<
That is essentially the basis for the "We are going to control the future"-politics which the EU specializes in. As Edward Bernays never tired of telling Western elites: systematic, scientific manipulation of public opinion is necessary to make democracy work. (And have they learned their lesson!)
Does it matter? No! By 2050, the present EU commissars will be dead, senile or otherwise irrelevant. Nobody will give a damn about the 2011 grandstanding of some shameless idiots ("political authorities") that earned loads of money promising "change we can believe in". One might as well believe that in 2100 any survivor of the Great Yosemite Park Blow-Up will give a damn about 100-year old computer models predicting higher global temperatures and shorter shorelines.
Is that good news? Not necessarily. One generation of shameless idiots that earn loads of money promising "change we can believe in" is usually followed by another, more sophisticated, even more idiotic lot. That goes on and on until, as they say, the money runs out — when too few people can still afford to be suckers — and reality kicks in.
People want freedom. We’re not drones. Automobiles provide us with such freedom to travel anywhere we like at anytime. This is contrary to the ideology of the insane people in charge of most governments on this planet. Liberty will always win, thankfully the United States exists, i just hope the American people haven’t forgotten how they their country was founded.
I think this is just an evil plot by the latest EU migrants to corner the Rickshaw market? 😉
What about that guy who made a human powered flight across the Channel? Are all the summer holidaying English going to have to fly themselves to Spain now?
“Automobiles provide us with such freedom to travel anywhere we like at anytime.”
Freedom’s good, for sure. But the freedom to travel “anywhere we like anytime” by car comes at considerable cost — including the costs of noise, of particulate emissions and smog, of traffic-clogged thoroughfares and of massive infrastructure expenditure. Moreover, it is subject to many inconveniences and limitations. For instance, in London, cars travel at an average speed only ten miles an hour (http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/topstories/804876.london_cars_move_no_faster_than_chickens/) — that’s after the imposition of the “congestion charge” sped things up from 8.5 mph — and an hour’s parking costs five quid, if you can find a spot.
And then there is the enormous personal cost of gas, depreciation, etc., which means that many people spend much of their working lives to earn what it takes merely to pay for their car.
The automobile was an extraordinary development and a great improvement on the horse-draw carriage. But today, we can surely come up with something vastly more efficient, more compact, faster and with with a much smaller environmental impact. This is not about green politics, its about good engineering and a better quality of life for a global population of seven billion and rising.
The politics of devising better transportation solutions will be contentious and complex, but with this initiative, the EU seems to have made one of its few if not its only useful contribution to European life. At least they have put the issue on the table. Who knows, something good may come of it.
This could probably work on highways, but not in cities.
Travis B says:
March 29, 2011 at 7:04 am
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And how do you suggest those of us living miles out in the country, with rotten, pot-holed roads, no nearby railway station, hardly a bus to be seen, are supposed to cope? Just die of starvation? Never see our families and friends? Too tall to use mini electric cars (never mind failing supplies of power)? We’ll stick to our larger car, with winter tyres in season, thank you very much.
David S says:
March 29, 2011 at 8:33 am
When are the Europeans going to wise up and kick these psychopaths out?
________
The EUSSR is awash with unelected bureaucrats. We have three main political parties (well, if you count the LibDems as a main party, that is!) who all kowtow to the EU, so there is nobody sensible for whom to vote. They have all broken their promises on giving us referenda on the EU. I’d kick it out if I could. I fear revolution might be the only way to free ourselves, but the English don’t do revolution. I just wonder how much further they can press us before there is a character change and we do, finally, do revolution. It wouldn’t be before time.
BillD says:
March 29, 2011 at 5:21 pm
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BillD:
The Netherlands is largely flat. I live in a hilly village 3 miles from the nearest town. I live up a steep hill from where the nearest bus infrequently appears and I am senior in years. Using a bike for shopping, along a dangerous, narrow, pot-hole bedevilled road is not safe, nor within my energy capabilities; neither is dragging a large amount of shopping up said steep hill. You know not of what you speak.
No more cars in the city? Will they allow horse and buggy? I think cities already had this: 100 years ago.
Alfred Burdett says:
March 29, 2011 at 5:16 pm
It seems that you wish to damn the proposal to eventually eliminate cars from cities on the grounds that it’s a top-down bureaucratic solution.
That’d be a good enough reason for me.
I foresee a return of the guillotine by 2050……….
J.
“And how do you suggest those of us living miles out in the country, with rotten, pot-holed roads, no nearby railway station, hardly a bus to be seen, are supposed to cope? Just die of starvation?”
Drive a truck. That’s fine with me. Just don’t drive it through town every day, without paying the costs that you impose on residents of the city.
Those who object to top-down solutions to transportation problems will no doubt be happy to confine there automobile use to toll roads and live without street lighting.
“but the English don’t do revolution.”
Rubbish. Did you never hear of the War of the Roses? Or the civil war that ended with the execution of Charles I and the dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell? Or the Glorious Revolution that resulted in the flight of James II and the system of constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, which in degraded form, you enjoy in Britain today?
At current fertility rates, almost all of the major cities in Europe will have population half of what they are now. And if one considers the flight of younger people from Europe as a whole (to escape high taxes and high unemployment of a rapidly aging continent), the Alarmists may just get thier wish. London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna will be ghost towns and/or museums in 2050.
Alfred , you obviously have not seriously examined the costs of running a car in the UK, even though you write about the high costs. We pay a £50-plus fee every year for a very cursory MOT inspection, over 80% of our fuel costs are government-imposed taxes, insurance costs will shortly be rocketing upwards due to the mad EU directive for insurers to charge the long-suffering insured the top whack regardless of gender in the dubious cause of ‘equality’, the exhorbitant sales tax on motor parts including tyres cannot be avoided. Armies of otherwise unemployable parking wardens enforce the high charges for parking and the annual vehicle tax demand is yet another charge against the vehicle owner.
Successive governments have regarded motor vehicles and everything pertaining to them as a wonderful golden goose; a senior exec of a multinational oil company once told me “If oil companies were truly greedy they would opt out of the oil business and into the government business.”
I pay what I consider to be an exhorbitant Council Tax for the privelege of occupying a very modest but wildly overvalued terrace house; this tax should be suficient to pay for the space my car occupies anywhere in the borough but no, I must pay again and again, wherever I need to go.
To add insult to injury and to the general motorists’ burden, Kamikaze pedestrians who ignore pedestrian crossings and traffic signals and suicidal cyclists who think a bit of bright Lycra, a plastic hat and a twinkling Christmas light on the rear of their cycle renderss them immortal and even bulletproof all combine to ensure my constant high state of alertness wherever and whenever I drive.
And you think we wander casually about town in our ton-and-a-half of machinery with leather armchairs using 200 horsepower for this. You forget that most who own cars choose the style or configuration because of a combination of factors important in and to their lives that only the individual owner can know, factors which are beyond the ken (and rightly so) of civic busybodies such as remote planners employed by the EU.
The freedom of the individual is one of the rights and priveleges our forefathers fought and died for, including the right to participate fully in a technologically-enabled society. IMHO you are not just a traffic troll, sir, you are a very ignorant anti-liberties traffic troll.
“At current fertility rates, almost all of the major cities in Europe will have population half of what they are now. ”
No, the fertility rate has nothing to do with the population in Europe, which is expanding through mass immigration from Asia, Africa and the ME — same is true in America and Canada.
The Liberal-lefties in Europe are conducting a program of autogenocide. But Europe will remain crowded, just not with Europeans.
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_pop_grow&idim=country:GBR&dl=en&hl=en&q=british+population+growth#met=sp_pop_grow&idim=country:GBR:ITA:FRA:USA:CAN
“Alfred , you obviously have not seriously examined the costs of running a car in the UK”
On the contrary, Alexander, as I have written here (may I mention where without rebuke, Anthony?) :
http://theinexactscientist.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/the-uk-rejects-first-ever-sensible-eu-proposal/
“As suburbs sprawled further from downtown areas, the vast majority of the working population spent an ever increasing proportion of their time either driving their cars or working to pay for them. ”
The fact is, the automobile, at least in it’s present form, represents a huge misallocation of resources. Individually, we are compelled to make this misallocation because a city can have only one transportation system at a time, and currently most cities rely on the automobile of the type I described. Sooner or later, Western nations will likely be forced to switch to an alternative, if only because they are now going bankrupt. The UK I believe is running a government deficit equal to ten % of GDP, and real incomes are falling as is the GDP. The US might be in even worse shape were it not able to go on buying oil and vast quantities of manufactured goods with pieces of paper so helpfully printed by Mr. Bernanke.
Whether your taxes actually cover the external costs of your automobile use might be difficult to determine. However, the external costs are certainly very large as is evident from the effect of traffic volume on property values, the reduction in life expectancy due to urban air pollution, mostly of it from automobiles, etc.
RE: “The plan also envisages an end to cheap holiday flights from Britain to southern Europe”
The blokes will be in the streets. And you thought football hooliganism was bad. Send in the riot police! 😉
Alfred Burdett says:
March 30, 2011 at 8:34 am
____
I don’t drive a truck and I don’t go near a town more than I have to for basic supplies; on the other hand, townies fly through our village to the detriment of the villagers, which makes it very dangerous for walking, cycling, horse-riding, or even driving. The Townies also like the trade we give them when we do have to visit to shop. We don’t have much choice actually, as we lack shops, schools or pubs.
As to the English and revolution: the examples you quote are not from recent history. In recent times the English have NOT gone in for revolution, and it’s certainly time they did once more.
Now I think about it…you do seem to be a bit troll-ish; so I’ll not be responding to you any further.